The weekly feature rounds up the latest updates in museum appointments, openings, funding and new exhibitions from across the UK.
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Appointments
Fashion Museum Bath has announced the appointment of two new co-chairs and eight trustees to its foundation board. The move comes as Bath & North East Somerset Council prepare to open the new Fashion Museum. Broadcaster Sharanjit Leyl and Director of Buildings and Renewal at the Barbican Centre, Philippa Simpson, will co-chair the foundation board. Its eight new trustees are Sophie Broadfield, Fiona Gourley, Martin Haigh, Louise McCabe, Rosa Park, Simon Randall CBE, Professor Andy Salmon, and Robert Yentob.
Gunnersbury Park & Museum has appointed a new head of museum services. Corinne Wan joins the museum as head of museum services. She previously worked at The Postal Museum London where she served as senior curator and led the development and research of its collections.
Figures from the sectors of TV, tech, animation and brewing sectors are just some of the new board members at Norwich’s Sainsbury Centre after a wide-range of new appointments. Eight professionals will join the board of the museum, which said it had made the appointments in response to the UK government’s £60 million investment into the creative industries.
Opening and closures
Newhaven Fort, a historic landmark in East Sussex, is to reopen its doors to the public later this month, completing a transformative £7.5m restoration project. Opening on 15 February 2025 after 12 months of closure, the newly restored 19th-century fort will reveal an enhanced visitor experience, a new adventure playground, cafe, interactive exhibitions, and previously hidden parts of the fort.
London’s Natural History Museum is to open its first gallery in nearly a decade later this year. The new ‘Fixing Our Broken Planet’ gallery is set to open on 3 April 2025, and will explore global environmental challenges, including a showcase research from the scientists based at the museum.cThe gallery will be based in the original 1881 Waterhouse South Kensington building, which required full restoration.
Natural History Museum’s first gallery in a decade to highlight scientists’ work
Exhibitions
Perth Museum‘s new exhibition ‘Macbeth: An Exhibition’ explores the historical origins of the Scottish king and Shakespeare’s enduring theatrical legacy, featuring connections to Perthshire’s landscape including Birnam Wood and Dunsinane Hill. Objects on display include an 11th-century sword from King Macbeth’s era, Shakespeare’s First Folio, rare witchcraft documents including Dr John Dee’s Spiritual Diary, James VI/I’s Dæmonologie, international adaptations of the play, and Charlotte Rose’s ‘Dagger of the Mind’. The exhibition will run at Perth Museum from April 2025, with exact dates yet to be announced.
The Postal Museum in London has announced ‘Voices of Resistance: Slavery and Post in the Caribbean’, an exhibition which exposes how 19th century British postal services profited from and enabled transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans, by exploring the lives and legacies of those enslaved. It will tell the stories of enslaved women, men and children who endured exploitation and persecution in the Caribbean. It will display an artistic response from a group of African, Caribbean and Black diaspora women working for Royal Mail in London, inspired by the stories of two enslaved women: Elizabeth who secured freedom through manumission, and Nancy who bravely protested against working conditions. Also on display will be written documents by James MacQueen, pro-slavery campaigner and RMSPC founder, whose aim was to maintain power across the British Empire. The exhibition runs from 5 April 2025 – 5 January 2026.
The National Trust exhibition ‘Between the Covers with Vita: The Life and Literature of Vita Sackville-West’ at Sissinghurst, Kent, explores the literary legacy of the 20th-century writer, gardener and aristocrat through ten of her published pieces, alongside personal artefacts including her notebook, a letter opener belonging to her grandmother, and a printing press from the Hogarth Press. Objects on display include a rare copy of ‘Devil at Westease’, an original watercolour design for ‘The Air’, and new commissioned illustrations and an animated film by Sarah Tanat-Jones. The exhibition runs from 10 February 2025 – 7 September 2025.
At Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery in Hampshire, ‘Bound Together: Modern British Bookbinding’ presents the first major overview of internationally renowned bookbinder Roger Powell OBE, featuring 24 rarely seen fine bindings alongside works by his mentors Douglas Cockerell and William Matthews, and his student Peter Waters. Notable objects include Powell’s 1934 binding of a book on JS Bach, The Jungle Book bound by both Matthews and Powell, a 14th-century Legenda sanctorum, and contemporary works from Designer Bookbinders including Stuart Brockman’s Twenty Duets and Kaori Maki’s Estuary Poems. The exhibition runs from 18 February 2025 – 3 May 2025.
Funding
Thirty projects across England exploring working-class heritage have been funded by the latest round of Historic England’s Everyday Heritage grants programme. Almost £500,000 has been awarded in total to projects including those exploring people connected to England’s oldest prison in Hexham, Liverpool’s Overhead Railway, and the tradition of ‘Shrovetide Football’, an annual medieval football game still played in Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
30 projects backed to explore England’s working-class heritage
